Great Mother

For other uses, see Mother (disambiguation).

Great Mother was the name in Basic used to describe the Nelvaanian homeworld Nelvaan in its natural, unmarred state. During the Clone Wars, when the army of the Separatists established a Techno Union facility near the Rokrul area, sapping the planet's geothermal energy and plunging the planet into a preternatural winter, the Nelvaanians deemed it an 'illness' suffered by their Great Mother, the planet itself.

In 19 BBY, after Jedi Knights Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi were led to Nelvaan's principal village by its chieftain Tuzes-Adaz, the Rokrul shaman Orvos, upon seeing Anakin's mechanical hand, proclaimed that the young Jedi Knight was the culture's long-foretold savior, the Holt Kazed 'Ghost Hand'—a promised one who would come to cure the Great Mother in her time of great illness. In a spirit of relief and hope, the Nelvaanians rejoiced.

Soon, symbolic markings were being applied to Anakin's torso by bruise-leech crawlers as the young Jedi Knight submitted to the tribe's ritualistic trial by 'fire'—the initiation rite for which Orvos began by reverentially and preparatorily speaking to the Spirit of the Fire round a circle of fire (bonfire). The next morning, Anakin embarked on his expected pilgrimage into the wilderness, a heroic quest that the Nelvaanians called the 'journey into fire'—this particular journey being the tribe's most celebrated yet—and they anxiously awaited their savior's return.

The resultant Trial of the Spirit on behalf of the Great Mother and her Nelvaanian children, selflessly performed by the planet's long-foretold redeemer-warrior, came to be known ever after as the Battle of Nelvaan, with its restorative aftermath and renewal.